Wii Officially Hacked!

Great presentation (video) to give you a little idea of how Nintendo secures/encrypts the wii and how it has been circumvented.
video fixed *tactix*

[ame="http://youtube.com/watch?v=aD7kEKrnCU4"]YouTube - The state of the Wii - 24c3[/ame] - The state of the Wii - 24c3

According to internet reports, hackers at 24C4 demoed a full Wii hack that provides native Wii homebrew with full access to the Wii hardware without the need for GC mode. They were able to find all the encryption and decryption keys by doing full memory dumps at runtime over a custom serial interface. Using the keys it was possible to create a Wii game that ran their own code

The guys over at 24C3 just demoed a Wii hack that is set to provide native Wii
homebrew in the near future (not running in GC mode, and with full access to all the Wii hardware!)

They were able to find encryption and decryption keys by doing full memory
dumps at runtime over a custom serial interface. Using these keys, they were
able to create a Wii ‘game’ that ran their own code (their demo happened to show live sensor/Wiimote information, amongst a few other things).

Ahem hello world sd backup loader or maybe a play backups/homebrew wii channel

edited by tactix just a bit more info and changed the vid link as embeded video on that one has been disabled

Last edited by fatal; 12-29-2007 at 05:34 PM.
Reason: move video to top for portal

Great, I am wondering if this gives us free VC Games anytime soon. :-)

- Downsizing ISOs should be possible soon?
- Playing Emus in wiiMode with Classic Controller!!!
- Playing ISOs from USB-Harddrive ... would be really coul, but still sounds very impossible, you would ned to compile drivers for the wii FW?

So you attended the 24c3. Can you tell me briefly what the convention is all about?

> Sure. This was my first time attending -- I went this year because it sounds like fun, and a friend of mine (mist, who was one of the Xbox 360 presenters this year, and who also presented last year on IIRC Xbox stuff) suggested I come along.

> It's one of the longest-standing hacker conferences around -- it's almost as old as I am! -- and it has a great reputation for being open and bringing together a diverse group of people to talk about neat stuff, and, well, just sit down together and hack on stuff.

Yes, it does sound like a good time. So were you invited because Mist knew of your revolutionary discovery?

> Well, I don't know that I was really "invited" -- I just went as an attendee. Mist knew that I'd been working on the Wii stuff -- and actually, he had introduced me to some of the others I worked with (such as tmbinc). It seemed like a good opportunity to meet some like-minded people, and maybe get some ideas. I brought all of my "stuff" along, hoping I might be able to show *something*, but didn't know we'd have anything ready to show.

> So, Mist and tmbinc told me they'd lend me a little bit of their talk if I wanted, and that's what ended up happening. (at the very last moment, no less!)

So you basically compared ideas and found the exploit on the spot?

> It was a bit more involved than that. I've been working with tmbinc and a few others, on and off, for a few months -- I don't want to name them until I've asked them if they want to be named -- but I certainly had a lot of help. We'd managed to decrypt a lot of the Wii data within the past month, and had been looking for a way to run homebrew code.

> We had a few different ideas for things to do, but nothing really seemed to work -- I have so many DVDs that I burned that booted half-way and then froze -- but at the last minute (maybe 30 mins before the presentation), I managed to get one that I could reproduce reliably (at least for a demo)

Talk about timing! No wonder you were so excited! Now that you've been able to run code in Wii mode what are your plans?

> Heh, yeah, I was surprised to see so many comments about that on the YouTube posting. I was pretty excited and pretty nervous, sure, and not entirely positive it would actually work. I had hoped to get a little more polish on the demo -- like putting in some greets, etc -- but I ran out of DVDs at the last minute and had to run across the street to get some more. [...]

> The solution we found is still not very clean -- we intend to release a good solution, but it's going to take some time to do it right. I mostly wanted to show a proof of concept, that it could be done, and hopefully give people some ideas that they could pursue on their own.

> The immediate next goal is getting something like SDLoad working so that I can stop killing plastic trees -- after that, it'd be neat to have, say, a Linux Channel. Smiley

Yeah, Linux would be a great addition to the Wii. You mentioned giving people ideas they could pursue on their own? Do you mean people in your circle or do you plan on releasing the information to the public?

> No, I meant the public as a whole. I talked about the address line hack that we'd done -- well, really, tmbinc is the one who finally pulled it off correctly -- in the hopes that others would take that and run with that. I'm not sure it's a super-hot idea for me to go around giving away all sorts of keys -- and besides, I'm hoping others will come up with easier / better ideas. I wanna learn, too!

So do you plan on releasing the information used to create the demo or wait until you have a more viable solution like you mentioned?

> Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait for a more viable solution. It's pretty hacky right now -- really, we barely pulled it off. There's so much to learn about this system (the Wii in general), since it's been one big black encrypted box until recently.

That's understandable. So you're next goal is for a SD Load Wii Edition. Do you have an estimated time frame on when this would be released and what functionality would it include?

> It's hard to say -- the time frame on this has been so wacky already. We worked for months with no progress, then would make great strides in a weekend, then get busy with Real Life (tm), etc. As far as functionality goes, it will probably be pretty basic, similar to the original SDLoad -- it will still have to use a GC mem card / SD card adapter, and it will just load .dols. [,,,[

> Much of the file formats, etc, are similar to that of the GameCube (once decrypted, or so I'm told -- I never had one to play with), so people should be able to start with that. I'm not sure what immediate advantages we'll see, though. (vs just running in GC mode)

> The things that make the Wii special -- Wiimote, WiiConnect24, channels, etc -- are all different than the GC, and as always, there's no documentation whatsoever. Smiley

Yes, I'm sure a lot of work will have to be done to take advantage of the Wii's extra components. I'm sure there will be a lot of activity in the Wii community now. All in all it's a great start and you've made history. Would you like to say anything else?

> Only that I'm grateful for the friends that I've made doing this -- and it's been fun, too. I'm glad I was able to play a part. Oh, and tehskeen rulez.

Thanks, I didn't know you were a visitor.

> Sure, thanks for the chat. Yup, I've been around lurking a while, just taking it all in and trying to learn. Tehskeen's always been a nice source of actual real, helpful info when I was trying to figure out how this stuff works and what other people had already tried, so that I could find a way to contribute.

Okay, take it easy and good luck with your future endeavours.

> Thanks! I'll be around

Source: tehskeen.com

This interview from today sounds not so promissing ... It starts with the first line, I thought this guy is the one who introduced the first modchip last year? well, he is not .... and who cares about a "linux channel"?